Blood Pact

Celluci.”

    "Yeah. I thought so. You look like a cop. Louis Delgado." His grip was still strong, his palm hard with a workman's calluses.
    "What happened to the other guy?”

    "He sat up with her all night. He's still sleeping.”

    "He's not a cop.”

    "No.”

    To Celluci's surprise the old man chuckled. "In my day two men fighting over one woman, there would have been blood on the street, let me tell you.”

    "What makes you think . . .”

    "You think maybe I shut my brain off when I retired? I saw the three of you together last night, remember?" His face grew suddenly somber. "Maybe it's a good thing people got more civilized; she doesn't need fighting around her right now. I saw her grow up. Watched her decide to be an adult when she should have been enjoying being a child. Tried to take care of her mother, insisted on taking care of herself.” He sighed. "She won't bend, you know. Now that this terrible thing has happened, you and that other fellow, don't you let her break.”

    "We'll do our best.”

    "Humph." He snorted again and swiped at his eyes with a snowy white handkerchief, his opinion of their best obviously not high.

    Celluci watched him return to his own apartment, then quietly closed the door. "Mr. Delgado cares about you a great deal," he said, crossing the room to stand by Vicki's side.

    She shook her head. "He was very fond of my mother.”

    She didn't speak again until they were in the car on the way to the funeral home.

    "Mike?”

    He glanced sideways. She wore her courtroom face. Not even the most diligent of defense attorneys could have found an opinion on it.

    "I didn't call her. And when she called me, I didn't answer. And then she died.”

    "You know there's no connection." He said it as gently as he could. He didn't expect an answer. He didn't get one.

    There wasn't anything else to say, so he reached down and covered her left hand with his. After a long moment, her fingers turned and she clutched at him with such force that he had to bite back an exclamation of pain. Only her hand moved. Her fingers were freezing.

    "It really is for your own good." Catherine finished fastening the chest strap and lightly touched number nine on the shoulder. "I know you don't like it, but we can't take a chance on you jerking the needles free. That's what happened to number six and we lost her." She smiled down into the isolation box. "You've come so much farther than the rest, even if your kidneys aren't working yet, that we'd hate to lose you, too." Reaching behind his left ear, she jacked the computer hookup into the implanted plug, fingertips checking that the skin hadn't pulled out from under the surgical steel collar clamped tight against scalp and skull.

    "Now then . . ." She shook her head over the shallow dents that marred the inner curve of the insulated lid. "You just lie quiet and I'll open this up the moment your dialysis is over.”

    The box closed with a sigh of airtight seals and the metallic snick of an automatic latch.

    Frowning slightly, Catherine adjusted the amount of pure oxygen flowing through the air intake. Although he'd moved past the point where he needed it and he could have managed on just regular filtered air, she wanted him to have every opportunity to succeed.
    Later, when the muscle diagnostics were running, she'd give him a full body massage with the estrogen cream. His skin wasn't looking good. In the meantime, she flicked the switch that would start the transmission through his net and moved to check on the other two boxes.

    Number eight had begun to fail. Not only were the joints becoming less responsive but the extremities had darkened and she suspected the liver had begun to putrefy, a sure sign that the bacteria had started to die.

    "Billions of them multiplying all over the world," she said sadly, stroking the top of number eight's box. "Why can't we keep these alive long enough to do some good?”

    At the third box, recently vacated by the dissected number seven, she scanned one of a trio of computer monitors. Marjory Nelson's brain wave patterns, recorded over the months just previous to her death, were being transmitted in a continuous loop through the newly installed neural net. They'd never had actual brain wave patterns before. All previous experiments, including numbers eight and nine, had only ever received generic alpha waves recorded from herself and Donald.

    "I've got great hopes for you, number ten. There's no reason you . . ."